The emotional landscape of social class in English education

The last ten years has seen increasing concern about the wellbeing of children and young people in schools across the globe. Growing evidence of anxiety and stress have accompanied falling levels of life satisfaction among school children. This article adopts a Bourdieusian analysis, working with concepts of habitus, field and symbolic violence to understand the affective consequences of class inequalities in education. As the article tries to show through a focus on schooling in England, there are different types of class thinking and feeling that characterise different social class positions within the field of education.